The Ringmaster asks for silence by putting his hands up and soon
everyone quiets down giving him their attention. He goes on through the
list of the cities and towns they’ll be passing through assuring Jean
and Jane they’ll get plenty of time to find new materials, assuring Mr.
and Mrs. Magentis they’ll have time to practice their various foreign
languages. Clive wants to know if they can spend an extra day or so in
Allentown so he can do some building with an expert illusionist, Polly
would like to spend some time with her family in Shelbyville. Mr.
Thimble says yes to both accounts and once everyone has voiced their
needs they wish to be met at the different stops, the rest of the
performers and workers have woken up.
They amble to the food tent ready for coffee and food, catching the
excitement of the ones who’ve already been up for hours.
Once the entire camp is awake and working the buzz of business is loud
and the delightful shouts of playing children mixes with the scolds of
their parents as everyone hurries to pack up camp.
There are stagehands that help set up the tents, drive, and break down.
There are those who take tickets and do public relations. Everyone
pitches in with the show; everyone has multiple duties during the day
and in the course of the night. You can hardly say you’ve ever seen more
hardworking and skilled folk; the performers as well as stagehands and
the seamstresses.
These people who’ve been going from town to town, city-to-city,
entertaining millions, are going to suddenly find themselves in a
predicament they hadn’t been in for a very long time. A predicament
they’ve always been afraid of, hoping to have found permanent shelter
from it in the circus. There are those that do not like their kind, for
you see, our friends are not all they appear to be.
It’s been said the best place to hide is in the open. A thief hides a
recently stolen painting rolled up and packaged, lumped with the
outgoing mail. An alcoholic hides his hooch in a coffee mug.
A faerie hides his magic in the guise of a magician. An ogre might look
like the strong man, a nymph moves like a ballerina. Sometimes a child
who does not have the same limitations as adults might see a stagehand
climb like a monkey and maybe, very quickly that child would notice a
tail; a tail on a man? The child’s parents will laugh it off as
Imagination but that child would know - at least until she grew up and
forgot - that she is seeing something supernatural. To a child any
circus is a wonder but Slap Dash and Lace, even to adults, is a
suspension of time and disbelief. The Magentis family, as they fly
across the sky above them, or Octavia, she could almost be the music her
motions are so fluid. The way Pearl dances with her snake, her very
poisonous snake and yet, it seems the slithery harbinger of death loves
his mistress and she loves him. Yes, the parents that amble in with
their young forget their age and revel along with their offspring.
Little do they know however, that they are not watching acrobats and
performers of the human variety.
A circus is a family affair, not just for those that visit, but also for
those that work it. The children pitch in as much as they can, fitting
in arithmetic and spelling in with how to tie a sturdy knot, how to
keep the tents closed during storms, how to break down and build up
stages within minutes. Costume changes, warm ups, dance lessons,
gymnastics, these things are of equal importance to a child of the
circus as much as geography or language might be.
The child that wishes to run away with the circus so as not to go to
school would be sadly disappointed. Physics, geometry, these are
studies needed for the correct calculations of tent height or cannon
ball velocity. Yes, a virtual cornucopia of schooling is what these
youngsters receive, and for these particular children, they receive
certain lessons in their family’s art. A magician might be born with
natural talent but it takes much practice to reign in the power and
guide it. A shape shifter might know how to change at birth but is it
voluntary and does the child perhaps get stuck with ears of a mouse,
unable to shift completely? These are the concerns of the parents of
this particular circus.
The day is spent taking down tents, breaking down stages, and folding
costumes, packing tables, chairs, pots and pans. As the sun begins its
decent in the sky trucks hitched with trailers for living and cargo
naturally fall into a line as they leave the big fairgrounds that for
one entire month had been their home.
Polly and Octavia ride with Hank, Clive and Jimmy; music blasting from
the stereo. The weather is changing and though dusk settles around
their shoulders the air is warm. The windows are rolled down and
there’s a smile on everyone face.
Mr. Thimble is in his truck by himself. In the side mirrors he can see
the serpentine figure his circus makes behind him and he smiles. This
is his family; as rough and tumble as they might be they are his world.
He lights his cigar and puts the match in the truck ashtray. The music
plays low as he thinks how long it will take to get to their first
destination. They’ll do a couple of quick week stops before they get to
the bigger towns and stay longer. He has many details in his brain,
swimming together to form full thoughts. If he were to think aloud, the
thoughts would sound disjointed, uneven, mangled. But his brain jumps
from one to the other, remembering to go back to the first or third
thought and finish it. He has to make sure he drives slower than usual
as one of the cargo trucks tends to over heat. That’s something they’ll
fix in the next town. Then he thinks about Froggy’s new motorbike;
they’ve set aside some good money and he knows how excited Froggy is.
For as much as his thoughts wander around each and every person in his
circus family, there’s always a bit of his thought on one in particular.
He sighs as Octavia pops up again like she did just a few minutes
before. What he wouldn’t give to finally once and for all tell that
woman how he feels. And yet… and yet it’s been a garden of years since
they first met and the Ringmaster thinks he might never tell her. The
CB cracks as Hank tells a dirty joke pulling Mr. Thimble out of his
reverie. Alive now with excitement for the road different drivers chime
in with limericks, short stories and lots of playful banter. If
there’s any place on earth these people could be it would be right here,
on the road, with each other.
